In The Blink Of An Eye
by JillyW
Summary: A short Pezzini POV...


NOTES: This is what happens when I watch too much Witchblade right before bedtime... My first - and probably only WB fic, unless Jake decides to visit my dreams again. Huge thanks and big hugs to Chya for chivvying the image out of me and encouraging me to fic it, as well as for the beta.  
  
DISCLAIMER: They aren't mine, I'm only borrowing them briefly and will put them back (almost) intact.  
  
  
  
*****  
  
In The Blink Of An Eye  
  
By JillyW  
  
  
  
In the blink of an eye, everything can change...  
  
"Danny? You in position?" Detective Sara Pezzini whispered the words into the mike clipped to the collar of her leather jacket, hearing the expected murmur of confirmation through the connecting earpiece. At least they'd get some advance warning of anyone venturing into this cluttered alleyway from the main drag.  
  
She dug her hands deeper into her pockets against the night time cold as she surveyed the scene before her, mind racing over the possibilities and trying to plan for eventualities that she could only guess at. The anonymous tip-off that had brought them here had been quite specific as to where and when, but worryingly vague on the who and what, and she and her partner, Danny Woo, had done some serious debating before deciding to follow up on it. Of course, the mention of drugs in the same breath as the name of one of the underworld's newest leading lights had tipped the scales in the end - closing this one down before it could get started was too good an opportunity to miss.  
  
Too good? That thought raised a tingle of apprehension, that sixth sense alarm bell she was becoming more and more familiar with. Whether or not she believed in the 'destiny' supposedly bound up in the ornate bracelet clinging snugly to her right wrist, she'd been involved in too many events unexplainable in normal terms recently for her to deny its powers. And right now it was making her wonder whether this wasn't just a little bit too inviting...  
  
"Pez?" The quiet voice from just behind her reminded her that she wasn't alone - the new boy, Jake McCarty, eyes flashing startlingly blue in a stray shaft of ambient light, was looking at her expectantly, puppy-dog eager as always to play his part. "Where do you want me?"  
  
She firmly squashed the automatic but inappropriately ribald response his innocent question immediately provoked, disguising her momentary lapse towards an admittedly alluring, but definitely best avoided, level of familiarity under another sweep of the surrounding tenements. They were mostly derelict, their windows dark and forbidding with a predominance of broken or just plain missing panes of glass. Any of them would provide decent cover, but it was quickly obvious that only the top floor of the building just to her left had a clear enough view of their target to be worth using.  
  
"Up there," she pointed, watching the rookie's eyes swivel in the same direction, a low groan escaping him as he craned his neck to complete the journey. She laughed softly. "What? Not been working out enough lately? Think of it as a training session..."  
  
He threw a sour look at her as he turned away, glancing back at her whispered, "Keep your head down, yeah? But let me know if you can see anyone moving inside - you should have a pretty clear view down into the main warehouse through those top windows."  
  
A small smile playing round his lips, he raised a finger to his forehead in mock salute. "You got it, boss!"  
  
She grinned in resigned amusement after his retreating back until he became lost in the shadows, then turned away to her solitary observation.  
  
It seemed mere seconds before a click in her earpiece had her glancing up, startled to see McCarty's unmistakable outline appear in the open space of a tall upper casement. And though she could have sworn all the windows had been black and forbidding cavities in the tarnished brickwork, somehow this particular one now held an ethereal glow, glimmering pale and eerie. Tendrils of mist - or maybe that was steam, perhaps from an outlet pipe somewhere? Yes, more likely... wasn't it?... because the night had been clear and crisp up to now - drifted across in front of Jake's position, moving sinuously towards him, seeming to entwine itself gently about his body. A backwash of apparently source-less light threw his face into fine relief, giving her a clear view of his narrowing eyes and the expression of puzzled confusion that crossed his handsome features.   
  
Then, while she watched, the... steam, definitely steam... took on a pinkish cast that had her automatically looking back across the alley, convinced it was being caused by the diffusion of a laser-sight, the beam fragmented by the opaqueness of the cloud before the tell-tale red dot could make its presence known. But there was no indication of a point of origin in the blank façade opposite so she turned back, opening her mouth to voice an urgent warning to the junior member of her team even as she focussed on him again.  
  
With a jolt, though, Sara realised that - impossible as it was - the threat came from the mist itself; Jake's expression had gone from confused to determinedly desperate, his hands raising defensively in front of him as if to ward off an attack. And although there was none evidently forthcoming, she could see he was being forced inexorably backwards into the room behind him, something he very clearly didn't want to do if the straining muscles bunching the sleeves of his jacket and cording his neck as he clung to the window's outer frame were anything to go by.  
  
She went to shout to him, tell him she was coming to help him but, before she could get the words out, his grip failed him and he disappeared from view with a wordless cry. And that must have galvanised her into action, because the next thing she knew she was bursting through a door at the top of the stairs, finding herself in a vast brick-lined room, its high vaulted ceiling punctuated by cracked and grimy skylights through which the light of a full moon filtered in. She had no memory of the presumably arduous climb up there, wasn't even breathing heavily, but that hardly seemed to matter when her frantic gaze was caught and held by the blinking green light halfway down each side of the room, high up in the shadows near the roof.  
  
With dreadful clarity she knew what was going to happen, but could only watch horror-struck as Jake staggered backwards into the middle of the empty echoing space and straight into the path of the hailstorm of bullets spewed out by the wall-mounted sub-machine guns, guided to their target by the built-in movement sensors.  
  
She didn't think to question why they hadn't registered her presence; her mind was too busy trying to assimilate the sight of her trainee jerking disjointedly as the slugs caught him, before dropping bonelessly to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.  
  
Job done, the guns fell silent, the little green lights winking out, and - heedless of her own safety - Sara found herself on her knees at Jake's side, turning him in fear and trepidation, gently rolling him towards her, dreading the sight of yet another friend lying in blood-soaked death... (another? asked a distant part of her mind, but she brushed it impatiently away as something that had no place right here, right now).  
  
There was blood, yes, but not as much as she'd feared and expected and, on a hunch, she reached to unzip his jacket and rest a hand on the plaid workshirt-covered chest below. And with a convulsive spasm he came to life, eyes flaring open to stare blindly up in shock and pain as he gasped for breath, fingers scrabbling at the constricting fabric and pulling it away so he could get at the Kevlar vest he was wearing, obviously trying to free himself of its too-tight grip.  
  
'Sensible boy,' she thought grimly, batting his hands away to reach for the fastenings while at the same time registering distantly that it wasn't department issue, its satin surface reflecting back the light with a dull gleam that reminded her oddly of the breast-plate of a suit of armour. Something else for later, though, because she could see blood pulsing, hot and red, from wounds in his leg and shoulder, outside the protection afforded by the vest, the slickly spreading stains on the surrounding clothing growing at a frightening rate that yelled for immediate preventative treatment. But there were more than enough flattened reminders of the fusillade he'd been subjected to still embedded in the pock-marked metallic surface under her hands to give rise to real concernes that some at least had penetrated, and she knew she needed to be sure nothing vital had been hit before she concentrated on what could potentially be lesser hurts.  
  
Jake groaned as she finally lifted the protective shell free, his body arching up as if still connected to it, his face contorting as he fought to contain the urge to scream out his agony. Sweat beaded his forehead, his complexion turning more ashen and clammy by the moment as shock threatened to claim him. "Stay with me, Jake," she murmured, flinching in surprise at the sudden iron grip of the hands he clamped around her wrists as if attempting to prevent her seeing what lay beneath. She wasn't about to be deterred, though, breaking free with ease as his limited strength deserted him and completing her task.  
  
The smooth tanned skin of his torso was mottled with the pale circles of impact, each surrounded by a slowly spreading ring of incipient bruising. This she expected - a vest might stop a bullet, but it still felt like you'd been kicked in the chest by a mule. What made her stomach knot and her heart thud harder, though, were the crimson flowers blossoming from the three or four dark and angry looking holes dotted across his upper abdomen and chest - clear evidence of the ones that had gotten through.  
  
Sara fished desperately in her pockets for something to use to stem the flow, get a clearer look at the damage, but she realised even then that all wasn't as it seemed - suddenly, inexplicably, the blood was gone, the wounds healing and, though she didn't understand how that could possibly be, she could only be grateful for the fact that it would have to make things easier for her companion. Except that it wasn't. Even to her untrained eye the unmitigated pain-fuelled tension building in him was obvious, muscles spasming, body arching like a bow again, stubbled jaw clenching on a wave of anguish that broke through his diminishing control and burst from him in a scream that raised the hairs on the back of her neck.  
  
Her gaze was drawn back to the now blemish-free skin of his chest, her senses sharpening to the point that she was somehow bizarrely able to hear the faltering beat of his labouring heart, to see through the solidity of his muscular frame to the over-stressed organ within, watching it stutter and fail in its attempt to function on what blood still remained in his system, fluttering feebly but inevitably to a halt.   
  
And the imagined reproach in the rapidly glazing cloud-grey eyes stabbed her deep to the core, ripping an answering scream of denial from her throat.  
  
"Pez? Sara? You OK?" An urgent voice - Jake's voice? But how...? - percolated her distress, and she jolted herself back to this other now, finding herself still in the darkened alleyway. Hoping beyond hope that her ears weren't deceiving her, she lifted misbelieving eyes to the welcome sight of him standing looking at her curiously, uncertainty mingling with the speculation in his gaze. Jake, alive and well and patently free of bloody perforations, from the bottom of his booted feet to the top of his gel-spiked head, and she had to resist the urge to hug him, settling instead for a loon-like grin that had him frowning and looking around self-consciously. "What? Did I miss something?"  
  
In the blink of an eye, everything can become crystal clear...  
  
Another daydream? And what did it mean this time? She had no idea if what she'd seen would come to pass - and in any case, how could it when it made no sense? When what she'd experienced surpassed the bounds of possibility? But she'd come to learn that the impossible did sometimes become reality, especially in this new twilight world she seemed to be inhabiting, and there was no way she was risking Jake to find out.  
  
She brought a gloved hand to rub ruefully at her mouth, giving her time to suppress her smile and force the bubble of delighted relief back down until a more appropriate moment, knowing they still had a job to do. "No," she said soberly. "You didn't miss anything."  
  
"Ah..." he said, knowingly. "I see..." though it was patently obvious he didn't. There was a brief pause during which she could sense him trying to decide whether to push her further, and once again she had the strangest feeling that there was a great deal more to him than the ingenuous surfer-boy image he liked to hide behind. But he broke the silence, repeating his question. "So... where do you want me? Up there?" He gestured to the next building. "Bet I could get a good view down into the warehouse from the top floor."   
  
Taking a deep breath to wash away the lingering memories his words evoked, she shook her head firmly. "No, I don't think so. Why don't you just keep an eye out down that way, let me know if you spot these phantom buyers. They might decide to take the scenic route."  
  
For a moment she thought he was going to argue, but something in her expression must have told him she wasn't going to be persuaded otherwise. With a small smile, he raised a finger to his forehead in mock salute. "You got it, boss!"  
  
Some things never changed. And that was a fact she was truly grateful for.  
  
END 


End file.
